


Cream, No Sugar

by Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Coffee, Friendship, Gen, Harvard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:00:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: Set rather nebulously in the midst of the canon in betweenGood FathersandShared Spaces,a period of time about which I could write reams, but must instead content myself with a short series of stories about John and Brains and occasions on which they got coffee for one reason or another.





	1. Chapter 1

He makes the mistake of asking his assistant how he takes his coffee. Rather, he makes the mistake of insisting that his assistant  _demonstrate_  how he takes his coffee, after spouting some nonsense about being able to tell a great deal about a person according to their cream and sugar preferences. This is ridiculous, of course, but Brains is curious. A month of working with the boss’s son, and not even once has John taken him up on the offer of a cup of Brains’ coffee. Neither the morning’s custom roasted Sumatran blend, nor the afternoon’s single sourced Colombian Arabica. John hadn’t been tempted even the most hallowed of Brains’ selection, the brew he makes himself and only breaks out for the most serious of projects on the tightest of schedules, doubly caffeinated and weighed within a milligram. John’s politely declined each time.

But now he happens to have followed the young man to the break room, and he happens to notice that he’s gotten a coffee cup down from the cupboard, one of the big, sixteen ounce mugs in sleek matte black ceramic. He looks, as usual, a little bit spooked to be caught doing anything at all, but Brains is sure to offer him a reassuring smile, before launching into a fanciful spiel about coffee preferences, and the intensity of his curiosity with respect to John’s. Truthfully his objective is moderately evangelical in nature, and by discovering just what exactly his assistant considers the ideal cup of coffee, he hopes to set him on the path towards a superior experience, perhaps via the recommendation of something that would be a better fit than the sludge that gets cycled endlessly through the lab’s common coffee pot. Brains is working his way up to considering John a friend. This is the best way he can think of to initiate some amicable bonding.

This desire suffers slightly as he steps back to allow John to make what he considers a drinkable cup of coffee. It becomes a test of Brains’ ability to keep a straight face, as he watches the younger man retrieve a can of whipped cream from the fridge. It’s bad, but it gets immeasurably worse as John up ends the star-shaped tip into the coffee cup, and deposits what must be a volumetric measure of  _eighteen_ ounces of nitrous-whipped cream directly into the mug, topping it up a full, fluffy two inches past the lip.

Brains is unable to prevent the escape of the tiniest, most pathetic noise of protest as John very patiently pours a ribbon of hot black coffee over the towering mound of sugary fat, until the entire mess has melted down into bubbly foam around the rim of the mug, a concoction that’s turned a perfectly passable cup of innocent black coffee into a frothy gold, a shade to match the ocean damp sands of LA’s beachfront. A cup filled with the equivalent of a middling dirty blonde, where there was once a glossy, perfect brunette. A process which takes all the delicate chemical ballet of a perfect, heady cup of well brewed coffee, and smothers it in the lipids and insipid proteins of a can of  _Reddi-Whip_. He has the temerity to stir it, without clinking the spoon against the sides of the mug even once.

Confronted with Brains’ helpless expression of abject horror, John at least has the politesse to offer an explanation, even as he lifts the mug and offers a sheepish toast. “My brother suggested it. I’m supposed to put some weight back on,” he says, prosaic, leaning against the counter. And then, embarrassed, “I knew it would probably be, uh. A little offensive. Considering, um,  _your_  tastes. I probably should’ve left it at ‘cream, no sugar’.”

“That th-there’s a m-medical c-component c-certainly softens the b-blow.” Brains adjusts his glasses. “There would p-possibly have been the n-necessity of urgent medical intervention on  _my_  behalf h-had you ever d-done it to a c-cup of  _mine_.”

“No kidding.” Brains can count on one hand the number of times he’s seen John smile. It’s a ghost of an expression whenever he has, like it’s not often practiced and therefore somewhat forgotten. This time it almost reaches his eyes, as he sips deliberately at the nightmare he’s concocted and says, “Would you believe I can make it worse?”

“You couldn’t p-possibly.”

“In a word.”

Brains shakes his head, mocking despair. “I a-am the unfortunate child of c-curious parents,” he laments. “What word?”

This time the flash of a grin might just be genuine, though it’s gone like a lightning strike. John salutes him with the mug again, and explains, “Decaf.”

And though he hears a chuckle as he goes, Brains is forced to turn on his heel and leave the room.


	2. Chapter 2

Brains isn’t sure why exactly he’s quite so charmed by the mythology of the classic American Diner. The Greasy Spoon. The sort of hole-in-the-wall, twenty-four/seven, open-til-the-health-inspector-can-make-something-stick type of establishment that just doesn’t have an equivalent back in England—but if any particular cultural hallmark in the good ol’ US of A was going to cast such a spell, he could certainly have done worse.

He’s also not sure if John was only being polite, when he’d accepted his invitation for a quick bite to eat after an especially late night at the lab. He’s not sure if he’d only been being polite himself by offering the invitation in the first place, as they’d rode down together in the elevator after finishing up for the day. Brains had certainly been prepared for an answer in the negative, a regretful apology and a cursory goodnight, and then the both of them back to the separation of their lives, outside the venn diagram of the TI Labs—the only place in the world where the second son of a multi-billionaire could  _possibly_  be designated Brains’ subordinate; officially his assistant.

But now, for whatever reason, they’re a few blocks down from Tracy Industries LA HQ, in a diner where Brains is an occasional regular. Usually he walks, but tonight their ride has been provided by John’s very obliging driver, who’s gotten a booth of his own over by the door and is contentedly nursing a cup of black coffee and reading the paper, apparently pleased to consider this a perk of his assignment.

And so here he is, or rather here  _they_  are, and in the bright halogen lighting of the timeless twenty-four hour diner, Brains surreptitiously sneaks glances at his assistant over the top of his menu. He knows this by heart, just the same as he already knows his order: a late-night breakfast of eggs, over easy, and extra crispy bacon, with a stack of fluffy American pancakes on the side, to be smeared with a fluffy scoop of butter and drenched in sugary golden syrup. But he hides behind the menu anyway, so better to go unobserved in observing his dining companion, as he sneaks glances over the top.

He really just can’t quite make sense of John.

Across the table, the younger man has pulled out his phone and snapped a picture of the menu, open on the table in front of him. This accomplished, he closes the menu and rests his phone on top of it, and after a few moments it buzzes softly. He picks it up, squints at whatever message he’s been sent, and then opens the menu again, checking it against his phone. When their waitress arrives, he refers to his phone once again, and orders a three egg omelet with cheese, avocado, and two extra egg whites, two sides of turkey sausage, a bran muffin, a vanilla milkshake, and a cup of coffee, decaf, for the wait. The waitress already has Brains’ order down, and has additionally brought a bowl of creamers, a piping hot little teapot of water, and a mug with a waiting tea bag.

As Brains pours himself a cup of Orange Pekoe, he contemplates what would work best as a conversational opener, but John surprises him with an overture of his own.

“I guess diner coffee was never going to meet your standards, but I would’ve figured American tea could only be a thousand times worse.”

“W-well,” Brains answers, pleased that he hasn’t had to cobble together some inane small talk about work or the weather. “They let me m-make it myself, you see, and that m-makes an enormous difference. T-truth be told, half the reason I drink coffee is because I had m-my fill of tea at Cambridge.”

This seems to catch at least a polite fascimile of John’s interest, and he answers, “My brother Scott spent some time in England. Mostly in London, I think, with friends. He took a year off after high school and traveled for a while, did some volunteer work.”

“Admirable,” Brains comments, and summons up what he knows about Jeff Tracy’s eldest son, and John’s only older brother. “H-had he enlisted in the air force before then, o-or—?”

“No, he went to Yale first. When you say Cambridge, my brain still thinks Boston’s Cambridge.” There’s a beat and then a soft huff of slightly self-recriminating laughter. “I think your version might’ve been my preference.”

This is the first time in Brains’ memory that John’s volunteered any information about his academic career, though he’s done so sideways, talking about his brother. He knows better than to probe any further, and carefully curtails the discussion, brings it to heel. “Ah, w-well. If the opportunity arises, do go. I’ve n-never been sorry for the path my career has taken, and it’s a t-tremendous honour to work for your father—but I have a d-dusty old academic soul, and s-sometimes I miss it.”

“Noted.”

Across the table, John’s already started to toy with the little bowl full of coffee creamers, his long-fingered hands stacking them into a pair of twin towers. The tremor in his hands is unmistakeable as Brains watches, and it kills the possibility of whatever inanity he might have been about to spiral into, about tea or coffee or Cambridge whatever else. Before tonight, it’s been something Brains has only caught glimpses of, something he’d never quite been certain he’d seen. This is the first time he’s been sure.

He’s known John for about a month and a half now, and in that time, he’s become fairly convicted in the theory that the boss’s son is sick, somehow. He’s not sure how or how serious it is—clearly not serious enough to put him in hospital, but serious enough that he’s been pulled out of school. Serious enough that Jeff Tracy is keeping him close, keeping a sharp eye on him. It’s none of Brains’ business, but equally it’s an unanswered question—and Brains is a man of science. If he considered himself to have one, he’s fairly sure it would be his soul that suffers most in the presence of the unknown.

Brains also isn’t the sort of man who makes leaps of faith as a matter of course. He hopes instead that this can be considered the way he intends it; as a leap of friendship. He’s concerned as much as he’s curious, as he finally summons the nerve to ask the question that’s been needling at him.

“Are you q-quite all right?”

John looks up sharply at that, and for a moment doesn’t quite seem to understand what he’s being asked. “I’m fine,” he answers, but there’s a cautious lilt at the end of the statement, as though he isn’t quite certain of the answer.

“Your hands are shaking.”

John freezes in the act of placing an eighth container of cream atop a tower of seven, but the trembling of his hand betrays him, and this topples. He’s immediately unfrozen, and abashed by the question. The coffee creamers are swept back into their bowl and his hands vanish below the table. “Low blood sugar,” he answers, a little too quickly.

Brains backs off immediately, recognizes that he’s overstepped a line. He adopts a bright tone that sounds false in his own ears, but hopefully John doesn’t notice. “Ah, of c-course. W-well, you’re certainly in the right place.”

The waitress arrives with John’s coffee and Brains busies himself with his cup of tea. And the conversation falls off after that, plummets immediately into the lowest echelons of unbearably polite small talk, the weather and work and tea and coffee and Cambridge, and Brains is left carefully plotting the conversational course around anything that might suggest more than a passing curiosity about John’s health and well-being. The younger man doesn’t bring his hands back above the table again until their food arrives, and even then, his gestures are close and cautious and self-conscious, and he doesn’t look up to meet Brains’ gaze at all.

Brains knows better than to take it personally, but it’s hard not to feel as though he’s squandered an opportunity, missed a chance to make a real connection to this rare, enigmatic young man, who drinks decaf coffee and can parse Brains’ esoteric filing system, whose hands shake and whose father watches him so closely, with a mixture of concern and suspicion. There’s something endlessly fascinating about John, and equally fascinating about the circumstances that have brought him to LA, and into Brains’ sphere. The only decent way Brains can think to get an answer to these questions is by asking, but they’re not questions one can ask of a semi-stranger.

But for tonight, at least, it seems as though John’s abruptly closed of all possible avenues by which Brains might have managed to approach something like friendship. They eat in a silence that’s less companionable than it might be, and as they finish up and John gestures to the waitress to request the check, Brains resolves to make another attempt.

“I’ve a c-conference coming up this weekend,” he announces, in a bid to break the silence that’s fallen over the table. “St-Stuttgart. Aeronautics. I don’t r-recall if I’d mentioned before now.”

Before he can carefully lead in to the suggestion of an invitation, there’s a shrug from the other side of the table and a non-committal comment, “I’m sure you’ll have a good time.”

Brains pauses, a little taken aback by the tacit rejection of his invitation, before he’s even made it. Undeterred, he tries a different tactic, “Y-you should take the weekend off. There’s no r-reason for you to stay cooped up in the lab, a-and I certainly don’t expect it. I’m t-told the beaches here are rather splendid, and the weather’s f-finally holding warm. You’re young, you should have some fun. If I remember, you’ve got your younger brother up in S-Santa Barbara. Perhaps he m-might—”

“Maybe,” John agrees, with the vague politeness of someone looking for an end to a conversation. The check arrives and he hands over a matte black card, representing a line of credit so deep and dark that it actually seems to absorb all the light that hits it. There’s no question of Brains paying for anything, despite the fact that the excursion was his suggestion. “We don’t talk much.”

“Ah.” This is going nowhere, and it becomes apparent that the window for socialization is rapidly closing. John’s stood up from the table, and though Brains isn’t a short man himself, he’s reminded of just how tall the younger man is, as John idly fishes in the pocket of his pale grey slacks, and drops a fifty dollar tip on the table, nearly twice the value of the entire meal again. American tipping practices are still so bizarre as to be practically indecipherable to Brains, but he’s learned not to comment. Instead he drapes his jacket over his arm, and slides out of the booth himself. “Well, thank you for joining me.”

“Pleasure.” This is stated in an empty sort of tone, the sort that seems to indicate that it was really anything but. John’s already looking past him, catching the attention of his driver, who’s already gotten his coffee poured into a to-go cup, and has his newspaper tucked beneath his arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dr. Hackenbacker.”

The formality of his full title stings a little bit, and Brains can’t help a quiet sigh. “Of c-course, John. Good night.”

“Good night.”

John leaves, and Brains watches him go. As the door swings closed behind him, he sits back down at the diner booth, and orders another pot of tea. This time, alone with his thoughts, he sets himself seriously to the problem of just what exactly he finds so fascinating about the young man. There’s almost something familiar about him, though Brains can’t quite pinpoint how or why. The question teases at the edge of his brain, but he just can’t quite seem to find its answer. He sits alone in the diner for what feels like a very long time.


	3. Chapter 3

The knock on the door of his rarely-used office is so soft that Brains almost doesn’t hear it. If some sixth sense hadn’t drawn his attention away from the latest reports from the engineering department, it’s quite possible that John would’ve just left. Instead, as Brains looks up, he finds his assistant frozen in the doorway, like he hadn’t expected that a knock on Brains’ door might actually result in Brains’ attention.

John looks better than expected for someone who was moderately delirious and halfway dead of the flu the last time Brains had heard from him. Their last conversation was a texted exchange that was rambling and only semi-coherent, and also the most and most candidly he and John had ever spoken. Brains has been concerned about him ever since.

But it’s been two weeks, and despite his own polite inquiries after John’s health, and reassurances from John’s father about John’s recovery, he hadn’t actually expected to see John back for at least another week yet. It’s a pleasant surprise to see the young man back in the office, but a surprise nonetheless. “O-oh! Good afternoon, John! I wasn’t expecting to s-see you back to work so soon.”

Now that he’s been acknowledged, John seems to realize he’s standing awkwardly in the doorway, and takes his cue to step into Brains’ office. He doesn’t approach the desk, certainly doesn’t take one of the chairs across from Brains’. He seems intensely grateful of the fact that he’s got a collection of files to shuffle around, because it spares him from having to find something to do with his hands, as he nods and shrugs and admits, “It’s only a half day.”

Brains stands, but refrains from circling out from around his desk. He’s learned from experience that John spooks easily, and approaching him too quickly and with too much familiarity is liable to have him suddenly invent something he’s forgotten to do on the other side of the lab, and bolt out of the vicinity in the name of pretending he needs to go do it. “H-how are you feeling?”

“Better,” is the answer, prompt and unelaborate. John shifts the files he’s holding from one hand to another. Idly, Brains wonders what they are, and whether anyone had needed them, or if they’re just something John’s latched onto as an excuse to have his hands full.

“I’m v-very glad to hear that.”

Perhaps in recognition of the fact that he’s only supposed to be in for a half-day, John’s wearing the first pair of jeans Brains has ever seen him in, and an unbuttoned cardigan over a t-shirt, with an artfully faded logo on the front. It’s the closest to casual that John’s gotten in Brains’ memory, though on the son of a billionaire, the jeans still probably cost as much as a small car. Brains also knows cashmere when he sees it, and he’s reasonably certain he’s seen Jeff Tracy wearing the exact same sweater, and the clothes of the billionaire himself must be an order of magnitude even more expensive. John’s t-shirt, at least, with its faded NASA insignia, looks as though it might be a little more pedestrian. It doesn’t fit him, that much is certain. Brains wonders if it ever did.

Still, even if he’s rather more disheveled than his usual state of impeccable dress, being tall and thin and posessed of a certain aesthetically pleasing vagueness, John has the enviable quality of always looking as though he’s accidentally toppled off the end of a runway somewhere, kept going, and wound up wandering aimlessly around Los Angeles in whatever will attire the young and fashionable in the upcoming season. Even if this is just a haphazard ensemble of ridiculously expensive jeans, one of his father’s cardigans, and an ill-fitting NASA t-shirt.

The bare minimum of pleasantries exchanged, Brains expects John to find some excuse to leave—but he lingers. It takes him a few moments more to summon up the nerve, but eventually his gaze darts up and then immediately back down, as he says, “I wanted to thank you. For…for the flowers. At the hospital. It was very kind of you.”

Brains waves away the gratitude, though he does appreciate it. Whatever else is true about John, he’s always been unfailingly polite. “O-of course. I only wanted y-you to know that you were b-being thought of. I’m gl-glad you’re feeling better, and I l-look forward to having you b-back in the l-lab properly.”

The files he carries shift from one hand to the other, and John shuffles his feet slightly where he stands. “You’ve always been very kind,” he says again, half to himself, as though finally coming to an obvious conclusion. He falls silent for a few moments and then, excruciatingly polite, he asks, “—May I close the door?”

Brains half-expects that John intends to be on the other side of it when he does so, but he nods his permission anyway, and John surprises him by remaining inside. Once the door is firmly closed behind him, he goes one step further, hesitantly taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of Brains’ desk. Initially Brains remains standing, but then makes a bold move of his own, and sits down atop the corner of his desk. It’s not comfortable, and he can’t quite seem to make it as casual a gesture as he’d hoped, but he’s narrowed the gap between them.

John’s abandoned the files he brought into the office, deposited them on a side table, and now his hands twist nervously in his lap. He’s an endearingly awkward creature, but his anxiety is palpable as he clears his throat and finds his voice again, for another cautious question.“Can I ask what my father told you about me, when I first came to LA?”

“A-about you?” Brains blinks at this, and then tries to recall exactly what had been said. He remembers the day it had happened, the very first of April. When he’d been called into Jeff Tracy’s office and told that his new assistant would be the boss’s second eldest son—he’d almost been tempted to ask if the whole proposition was an April Fool’s joke. The one thing he remembers—and it had seemed intensely uncharacteristic at the time—was the way Mr. Tracy had thought for a long moment, before concluding his announcement with a final caution, “ _Don’t expect too much of him._ ”

Meeting John the Monday after that, and finding him to be vague and uncertain and obviously overwhelmed by the whole situation—it had become obvious that what had seemed like an unfairly critical comment from John’s father had actually been meant as something of a warning, for Brains. Whatever Brains might have expected, it had been clear that there wasn’t much to be delivered. Kindly, Brains had put John to work making coffee and transcribing his notes, where he couldn’t do any harm. At least not beyond overbrewing a cup of coffee or flubbing the occasional integer.

He’s not about to tell John any of this, however. Brains clears his throat, and instead tells a slightly redacted version of the truth. “O-only that you were t-taking some time off from school a-and that you w-were to be an intern in the lab. He put forward the idea th-that you would assist me d-directly. I s-suppose he hoped you might learn s-something worthwhile.”

John processes this information for a few moments, and then he asks, “…was that  _all_  he told you about me?”

The emphasis is so slight it’s barely there, but Brains still hears it, and wonders what else there could’ve been to tell. He hesitates, wondering if the truth he’s left unstated is somehow obvious in its omission—but he nods all the same. “All that I f-felt was relevant.”

This causes John to grimace slightly, and his gaze drops back to his hands. There’s another long stretch of silence, and John doesn’t look up, nor does he sound quite like himself when he finally asks another question, “Can  _I_  tell you something?”

The emphasis is just as subtle this time, but it’s enough to make it clear that whatever John has to say for himself would be different than what his father has had to say for him. It takes deliberate restraint for Brains not to perk up where he sits. This is something he’s been waiting for, the unsolicited answer to the question he hasn’t known how to ask.  _Why are you here?_  was too cosmic and imprecise.  _What’s wrong with you?_  was just appallingly blunt. There’s no single question that would encapsulate everything he wants to know.  _Why do your hands shake? Why are you gone one day out of every four? Why are you so afraid of your father? How can I help?_

But instead he’s careful, casual, almost nonchalant as he says, “Of c-course.”

For as guarded as the younger man is about his emotions, Brains can see him steeling himself, bracing for something. His hands, curiously, have stilled in his lap, and the fingers of one have clasped around the wrist of the other.

The door is closed, the typical clamour of the lab outside seems muted, distant. Brains’ office is a simple space, minimally furnished for as rarely as he has cause to be in it. The floor to ceiling windows behind his desk are tinted in such a way that the light from outside passes in, but the view of the city does not. Occasionally Brains will take brief meetings here, or step inside to review reports from other departments, but by and large it goes unused. His desk is all matte glass and brushed aluminum, his chair behind it is some ridiculously over-engineered ergonomic thing. He keeps a change of clothes in a cabinet against the wall, but nothing much else. The chairs before the desk—the one John occupies and its partner—have a table between them, and are more comfortable than they look, for being sleek and boxy and modern, though John still looks uncomfortable where he sits. And with the door closed, the office is quiet enough that Brains hears the deep breath the young man takes, and the way it shudders into him, before he finally breaks the silence.

“I was supposed to tell my brother—Scott, my older brother—but he knew already. Virgil told him.” John doesn’t lift his gaze as he speaks, but there’s a steadiness to his voice, a quiet conviction that Brains hasn’t heard from him before. He seems almost to be talking to himself, as though that’s easier than talking to Brains directly. “I  _wanted_  to tell Virgil, but I  _didn’t_  tell Virgil, because Gordon told Virgil, and Gordon only knew because he found out for himself. I  _had_  to tell my father, because Gordon and Virgil made me. I have to tell my baby brother, but I don’t know how. A-and…now I’m trying to tell  _you_ , because…because you’ve been kind to me—without knowing why I don’t really deserve it.”

He hesitates, then, and glances up for a moment. There’s a flicker of vulnerability to him, and it’s possible that they both realize that this is the most he’s ever said at a stretch, the longest conversation he and Brains have had about anything unrelated to work. And so far, he’s mostly talked about his brothers.

Besides John, Brains knows his boss’ sons by name and by occupation and vaguely by age order, but not by much else. Scott, The Pilot; Virgil, the Engineer; Gordon, the Olympian—and Alan, the Youngest. Before he’d gotten out to LA, Brains had vaguely had the idea of John as The One At Harvard. He doesn’t dare interrupt, because for whatever he knows or doesn’t know about John’s brothers, right now Brains knows about to be told something that only John’s family knows about him. He feels as though he’s been holding his breath, and without quite meaning to, he gently prompts, “Go on.”

And, thus prompted, John does. There’s only the slightest tremor in his voice, as he says what he’d meant to say.

“I’m a drug addict.” There’s another sharp, short breath, and then he’s hasty as he continues, “I…I m-mean, I have a drug addiction. Adderall. It happened at Harvard, and that’s why I left. My dad pulled me out, and he put me here. And now I work for you.”

There’s no question that what John feels in the next moment is fear. Brains can see it in him, plain as day, in the way his voice falters and his eyes close and the way he falls silent. There’s nothing else he  _could_  feel, having confessed something like this to someone—anyone, really—but especially to someone who’s nominally his boss. The fortitude it takes for an addict to admit to and take ownership of their addiction is nothing short of incredible.

Brains, for his part, staring at John, feels a range of emotions that total up into the experience of feeling basically  _everything_ —shock and dismay and concern and compassion; awe and respect and the beginnings of a very specific sort of affection; the incongruent joy of knowing the answer to the question and absolute bewilderment that he hadn’t seen it before—and feeling all of it at once.

Complex problems, in Brains’ experience, rarely reach their resolutions in a single stroke of brilliance. Very ccasionally, but not at all often. A complex problem often has many moving parts, many diverse aspects, and cannot be solved in its entirety by any single action. Brains had tried to explain this to John’s elder brother, actually, only just two weeks ago. The notion that there was no silver bullet, that there was no magic thread to pull that would unravel the entire question.

Except in John’s case, there is. Because suddenly everything about him makes  _sense_.

Brains is a dyed-in-the-wool scholar, and has been in and out of institutions of higher learning for almost half his lifetime. He knows what burnout looks like and he knows about the sorts of people who are pushed to their razor’s edge by the rigorous demands of academia, and those who’ll push past it into the bloody dangerous territory beyond, when the cost begins to be exacted upon whatever passes for one’s soul.

He’s seen corruption and obsession and addiction and mania, and despite always being lucky enough to avoid the worst of it himself, he’d have to be a fool not to have seen the cracks in the surface of the world he inhabited. Brains has more degrees than he can count on one hand. He’s anything but a fool, but he still can’t understand how he’s missed this about John. There are so many reasons why he should have seen it immediately.

The silence breaks again, and John’s voice is halting and hesitant as he starts, “…if you don’t want me to work for you anymore—”

Brains phases back into the conversation, becomes aware of his own lengthy silence by degrees. This must have stretched out to a painfully awkward duration, if John’s managed to summon up his voice again. Brains realizes that his hand has gone involuntarily to his lips, and that he’s staring, just unambiguously  _goggling_  at the poor young man, who can’t possibly appreciate the amount of data Brains needs to process internally, and must be waiting for some sort of reaction beyond what can only appear to be shock and abject horror.

And he thinks that Brains doesn’t want to work with him any longer.

“No! N-no, no certainly not! N-n-nothing of the kind!” Brains almost startles himself, leaping to his feet from where he sits atop his desk. He  _absolutely_  startles John, who cringes where he sits and looks like he desperately regrets ever knocking on Brains’ door, almost as much as he regrets shutting the door and cutting off his exit.

He wouldn’t  _dream_  of letting John go as an assistant now— _especially_  not now—but it’s possible he’s accidentally been a little sharp in his vehemence, because John seems completely unreassured, and possibly even more startled than before. His hands go to the arms of his chair and he makes to get to his feet.

 _That_  won’t do, and the result is an apologetic flutter of confused movement, and Brains needs to check himself, because his overwhelming impulse is to reach out to the young man, push him back into his seat, and of course that’s a  _terrible_  idea. So instead Brains folds his arms tightly across his chest, and shakes his head again. “No,” he repeats, and tries to be firm and sincere, rather than sharp and urgent. “Please. S-s- _sss_ — _sit_! Stay. S-s- _sorry_. P-please.”

There are several things that need to happen, and the first of which is that Brains needs to calm down. The second of which is that John needs to stay, so that a calmed-down and coherent version of Brains can talk to him, calmly and coherently. Inspiration strikes suddenly as to the best way to set the tone, and he darts for the door, aware of the possibility that John will just leave before he can get back. It’s not as though he can stop him, but he makes one last appeal, “ _P-please_  stay,” called over his shoulder as he slips through the door, and then all but  _runs_  down the hallway from his office.

Brains is in the habit of bursting into places, caught up and excited by one breakthrough idea or another, but these places rarely include the main breakroom. This is thankfully empty, and Brains isn’t impeded by or interrupted by anyone, as he hurries to fetch a tray from one of the well-stocked cupboards. He retrieves a carafe and has it half-filled with the barely passable swill that passes through the breakroom coffee machine, before he curses and remembers something important. This is then emptied, quickly rinsed out, and then refilled with the lingering remnants of the pot of decaf. This is far, far worse, in Brains’ opinion, but it’s also not  _for_  him, so he’s going to have to suck it up in a gesture of solidarity.

He goes to the fridge, opens the door, and stares hard at the can of whipped cream, ready (Redi™) and waiting. In the end he can’t bring himself to do it, but he grabs an entire bowl full of little coffee creamers, and a platter of muffins for good measure. He gathers extra spoons and napkins, coffee mugs, a pair of saucers. All of this assembled, he returns to the tray, pours two cups of terrible coffee, and then takes the whole assembly rattling back to his office, hoping against hope that he’s been quick enough, and that John hasn’t bolted.

He’s been quick enough that he’s nearly spilled both cups of coffee on more than one occasion—and quick enough that by the time he gets back, John’s only made it out of his chair and over to the corner of the room by the floor to ceiling window. He’s untinted this so it displays the city sprawling out beyond and beneath TI’s east coast headquarters, but Brains is to anxiously excited to care, even if heights make him queasy. He sets the tray down gingerly, atop the small side table that sits between the two chairs before his desk. His entrance hasn’t been quiet, but John remains where he is, staring out the window, until he hears the clatter of porcelain against porcelain, and turns to see Brains carefully rearranging the contents of the tray.

Thus observed, Brains straightens up and adjusts his glasses slightly, tweaks the knot of the bowtie he’d decided to wear today. He clears his throat and gestures to the chair John had occupied before, “P-please,” he starts, “i-it would m-mean the world if y-you’d sit and j-join me. I would v-very much like to t-talk about this.”


End file.
